Wednesday, September 12, 2012

He's finally here! The last few weeks felt like forever. We are so happy he's part of our lives. Here's how it went down.

2am Saturday morning: I wake up with back cramps that are coming ever 5 minutes. I wake David up and after 2 hours of tracking them, we pack up and head to the hospital.

4:30am: I get checked in, change into my gown and get hooked up to monitors. My contractions are strong and still around 5 minutes apart. I get checked and I'm at 3cm dilated. I'm staying! We are shocked.

7:00am: I get an epidural after my contractions get stronger and stronger. The relief was amazing. My parents arrive and then we try to get some sleep since we barely got any before we came in.

10:00am: I get checked again and I'm nearly 5cm. My midwife breaks my water. Every time I look at the clock at least an hour has passed. I felt like the time flew by.

3:00pm: My midwife checks me again and I'm fully dilated. We wait a while to push since I don't feel the urge and let my body move the baby down. This was the most uncomfortable time for me. My ribs are hurting and it feels like I have heartburn/acid reflux. Plus I'm dying of thirst but I can't drink anything.

5:00pm: I do a test push and his head appears. David's reaction made me want to push harder. He was so excited to see him coming out, something I thought he'd want to avoid seeing. Pushing was HARD. I couldn't feel my contractions and couldn't tell if I was pushing correctly. It was hard for me to hold my breath long enough to make progress. My upper back hurt when I leaned forward to push and my ribs were killing me. Pushing made me nauseated and I threw up a few times. After I rested for a few contractions we started again. Finally my midwife told me to stop pushing and he squiggled out.

6:22pm: They laid him on my chest and I felt was amazement and disbelief. I couldn't believe he was MINE. No one else's. The first thing I said was how good he smelled. Like vanilla cookies. His skin was the softest thing I've ever felt. Since his head was right under my chin I couldn't see his face well, so I kept asking David who he looked like. We fell in love immediately.

Oh, and his name. We really didn't know what it would be the entire pregnancy. We thought once we saw his face that a name would just fit, but it really didn't work that way. He was unnamed for half a day. I've loved the name Jude for a very long time. David sweetly agreed to it for his first name the second day in the hospital. We had talked about a family name for his middle name. We remembered that we liked Loyal, which was David's great grandfather's name. It fit with Jude and worked perfectly.